Introduction
The H79 is the latest top-of-the-line DLP projector from Optoma and one
of the first on the market to utilize Texas Instruments’ new DarkChip3.
The H79 is priced at $9,999, a competitive sum for a top
of the line projector with the newest video chip technology. The
DarkChip3 is the latest iteration in the HD2+ series of DLP chips and
improves upon the prior Mustang chip by closing the gap between panels,
making the reverse side of the panels more light-absorbent, as well as
removing the dimple on each of the panels. Like the prior HD2+ series
chips, the DarkChip3 features a HD-capable resolution of 1,280 x 720
and a 16:9 aspect ratio. These changes increase contrast and help the H79 obtain its reported 4,500:1 contrast ratio. It was not clear how this projector was measured to get such
incredibly high contrast numbers, considering that many other top
projectors costing many times more money have many times less contrast.

Optoma knows that a top-performing chip alone does not make for a great projector and made sure that
the new DarkChip3 enhancements were not wasted in this aggressively
priced projector. The H79 has a decisively simple appearance, with its
cream-colored chassis that is fairly square, void of any fancy
race-inspired lines, and measures 16.9 inches by five-and-a-third
inches by 12 inches wide. The front of the projector has an opening for
the lens, the top has neatly organized controls,
the side panel has an IEC power plug with a blue status indicator light
and, finally, the back panel has the video and control connections. The back panel
includes an IR receiver, a BNC component/RGBHV input, an RCA component
input, a 12-volt trigger connector, an RS-232 port, S-Video, composite
and an HDCP-compliant DVI-I input. The entire
16.5-pound package sits on adjustable feet, which will let you obtain a
steady and level position on any nearly flat surface.

The included remote has a narrow midsection, almost bowtie in shape,
with each button is fully backlit. I found that the remote fit
comfortably in my hand and the backlighting made it easy to use. A
simple, ergonomic remote is more the exception than the rule today.
This remote gets high marks from me.

The
H79 utilizes a 250-watt UHP bulb that is capable of 1000 lumens and up
to 3000 hours of life in economy mode. New replacement bulbs are
reasonably priced at $399. The color wheel is a five-speed,
eight-segment device with what Optoma calls “Dark
Video Enhancement” for increased performance in dark scenes. The lens
assembly features a zoom range of 1.6:1 to 2.16:1 with power zoom and
focus and manual lens shift. The internal scaler is made by Pixelworks,
a name not as well known as Faroudja or DVDO but well-regarded among
those familiar with scalers.

Last but not least, we come to an important but often overlooked aspect of home theater: warranties. Optoma is highly regarded in the videophile community for being one of the few manufacturers that provides a dead pixel warranty. The warranty period is two years.
While many other manufacturers may voluntarily replace panels with dead pixels, it is reassuring to have it in writing on a product that represents this level of investment.

Set-up
The manual shift and power zoom/focus features of the lens assembly
made setup fairly simple. The motorized, remote controllable focus
allowed me to stand near the screen while adjusting the projector’s
focus without the help of someone else standing next to the projector.
The relatively short throw of the H79 allowed me to achieve a 92-inch
diagonal picture, even though I was working with less than 12 feet of
throw distance.

The lens shift feature allows one to mount the projector either below
or above the screen by as much as one screen height in distance if
necessary. While it is possible to do this, and the lens shift feature
minimizes the impact of doing so, I would still recommend trying to
mount the projector at or within the horizontal borders of the picture
to get the best possible picture quality.

I placed the projector on a high stand that brought it to the level of
the screen bottom and was slightly behind and between the viewing
positions. A huge plus is that this projector is very quiet and the
only light spill comes from the blue status light on the side. Put a
piece of tape over the status light and this becomes a very unobtrusive
projector, even if it is immediately adjacent to your viewing position.

The screen plays a huge role in the picture quality of any projector
system. I have seen projector-based home theaters where the screens
varied from using a nearly white wall all the way to a motorized
adjustable masking screen with acoustically transparent fabric. In my
system, my left and right speakers flank the screen with the center
channel below, so I did not need an acoustically transparent screen
material.

Stewart Filmscreen was kind enough to lend me a screen system and some
extra screen material. The screen I chose was their new GreyHawk
Reference, which has a gain of .95 (the higher the gain, the brighter
the screen). This screen material has a neutral gray look, which helps
with reproducing darker scenes, a traditional problem area for DLP
projectors. I also experimented with their Studiotek 130. This material
features a gain of 1.3 and was noticeably brighter. Dark scenes, when
all my ambient light was controlled, were still very good. Screen size
and ambient light concerns will play a large role in your screen
material selection.

Connecting the Optoma H79 to my reference system was easily
accomplished with runs of S-Video, component video and HDMI cables from
Monster Cable. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the new Marantz
DV-9500, which provided the HDMI output. The projector has an
auto-sensing feature that automatically seeks out the live input, a
nice feature which makes the projector easy to use, even for
non-techies.

Once
the projector is installed and focused, you can go ahead and fire it up
and begin to watch your movies at a very high level. However, I suspect
that many of you purchasing this projector, or any other
high-performance projector, will want to get the best possible picture.
The Optoma series, including the H79, gives an
extreme amount of control to the user. The picture quality controls
include selectable gamma curves, color temperature, contrast,
brightness, sharpness, blanking, horizontal and vertical keystone, and
more. This level of control makes it possible for you to hire a
professional video calibrator to milk every drop of performance from
your new H79. I used the middle color temperature and turned off the
“Britemode,” which produced a picture on my 92-inch GreyHawk Reference
screen that was plenty bright.

The H79 also features
four format choices: native, window, 16:9 and letterbox. Native, as the
name implies, uses 1:1 pixel mapping and was the setting I used in
connection with the Marantz DV-9500 720p HDMI output. Window displays a
4:3 image at full height. The 16:9 setting takes the incoming image and
scales it to fit the entire 16:9 panel. Letterbox scales a letterboxed
4:3 image to fit a 16:9 screen.

You'll
note that the H79 actually has more than the three settings that appear
on the first page of the on-screen display (Cinema, Normal, Vivid). The
H79 has different settings for different signal types (480i, 480p, 720p
or 1080i) even if it is from the same input source. Similarly for
different sources like composite, S-video, component, RGB, or DVI, it
also has different settings. That means each of these signals or source
has up to three different sets of memory settings (Cinema, Vivid, and
Normal). Furthermore, these different sets of memory settings are
automatically reloaded whenever a different source or signal type is
detected.

The Movies
While
watching “Spider-Man” (Columbia/TriStar Home Entertainment) again on
DVD, I noted the H79 on the GreyHawk screen did not produce colors
quite as vibrant as did the recently reviewed InFocus 7205 on a DaLite
1.0 gain screen. I substituted a Studiotek 130 1.3 gain screen with the
Optoma and the vibrancy was noticeably increased. I personally found
the Optoma’s colors on the GreyHawk Reference screen to be very
natural-looking and compelling. Moving to the darker scenes, I noticed
better performance from the Optoma, including better apparent
resolution and fewer dithering artifacts on the lower gain screen. It
is essential that you select the correct screen for your room when you
invest this kind of money into a video projector.
Next
I viewed chapters 27 and 28 from “Shakespeare in Love” (Miramax Home
Entertainment). The Optoma was just as sharp as the InFocus and did a
better job with the details in the darker uniforms and shadows. The
picture detail in the embroidery was good but not great, with some
flickering when viewed through the component inputs. This was reduced
noticeably when viewed through the 720p HDMI input.
Looking at “Toy Story” (Disney Home Entertainment), the picture
uniformity across large fields of the same color was very good. Some
minimal noise was noticeable on the component inputs, but not the HDMI
720p input and with the projector in native mode. The darker fields
were much cleaner on the Optoma, demonstrating the ability of the new
DarkChip3 with darker scenes.

I
then watched a bit of “I, Robot” (Fox Home Entertainment) in component
input, using the Optoma’s scaler, and then again with the 720p HDMI
output, bypassing the internal Optoma scaler. The 720p test was
slightly sharper that the Optoma scaler. I found that, as with the
other movies viewed, when watching through the HDMI input, the picture
was slightly sharper. I confirmed this by doing the same thing with
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (New Line Home
Entertainment). When Frodo, Sam and Gollum are approaching the gates of
Mordor, the scene was sharper and appeared to have more depth seen
through the HDMI input than it did when viewed through the component
inputs.

I then switched to HDTV via DirecTV and again
found a familiar episode of “24” to watch, as it has many dark scenes.
The new DarkChip3-equipped H79 had greatly reduced dithering in the
dark scenes when compared to similar projectors utilizing the prior
generation chip. I also watched some high-definition sports and
Discovery Channel and found the colors to be extremely natural, even
compared to those produced by my CRT projector.

When watching 480i sources, I noted some twitching on moving images,
not bad but an external scaler – even even a good but inexpensive
doubler – would perhaps improve this aspect of performance. DVDO’s new
scaler comes to mind for about $2,000. It is hard to judge 480i against
1080i HDTV, but most viewers still watch more 480i than anything else.
It is hard to say that that you wouldn’t be happy watching a baseball
game in SD (480i) or a movie not in HD. With really strong contrast
from the new chipset, the Optoma hangs right in there with my older CRT
projector, which is no small feat.

I spent some time going through the Silicon Optix test DVD and noted
that the color gradations had smooth transitions, except on very dark
colors. On the “Jaggies” test, the diagonal filter did okay but not
great, showing jagged edges on the bottom of three bars and on
low-angle diagonals. I noticed these artifacts when watching 480i
television as well. The Optoma did well on the flag test, with only
minor jaggies when using component inputs. After switching to the HDMI
720p input, the biggest notable difference was the increased detail in
the brick building in the background. On the detail test, the grass
looked great, as did the bridge. On the HDMI 720p input, the picture
was slightly sharper. Moving to the noise reduction tests, the Optoma
did very well when compared to stills, with very little noise on
simulated television signals; it was slightly worse with noise on
simulated film. The Optoma did a good job on all of the cadence tests.
I did notice at times that, when using the internal scaler between
scene changes, the image would lose its color and be displayed in black
and white for a split second. I can only assume that this is related to
the time that the scaler takes to lock onto the signal.

Overall, the internal Optoma processor did a relatively good job with
scaling and noise processing. When I bypassed the scaler with the 720p
HDMI signal, I thought that there was generally slightly better noise
reduction and a bit more detail: these are small but noticeable
differences.
The DownsideThe
scaler, while more than competent and possibly better than many in its
class, has some room for improvement. This will be especially relevant
if you are going to watch a lot of 480i television. Considering the
brightness and contrast advantages of the projector, this might warrant
an external scaler if you think 480i sources are going to make up most
of what you will watch during the ownership of this projector. The H79
does have native mode "pixel-by-pixel" mapping to make it match up to
any external video scaler according to Optoma however I believe this
may possibly result in a smaller picture. Personally, I think there
will be more HDTV channels coming in the next six to 12 months and this
projector looks great for HDTV.

Conclusion
The
Optoma H79 is an excellent projector in its price range for those
seeking a projector with superior picture quality. In terms of value,
the Optoma H79 costs less than many of the competitive projectors from
the likes of Yamaha, Sharp, Marantz and Sim2.

I
developed a fondness for the H79’s remote control, with its ease of use
and backlit buttons. Set-up was a breeze and picture control was at the
top of its class allowing you to make detailed adjustments to optimize
the picture. I personally recommend that projectors in this price range
be set up by a pro to get 100 percent from the projector’s
capabilities.

If you have a modest-sized screen, let’s say 100 inches, and relatively
controlled ambient light, the Optoma has more than enough brightness
for your needs. Brightness aside, nearly every aspect of the Optoma’s
picture quality is adjustable to suit the viewer’s tastes. The Optoma
H79 is a solid value and a projector that will bring you loads of joy
for years to come.